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Campaigns" It was good and not at all how I expected it to be. Totally different to anything I've been to before."
MED Theatre in Moretonhampstead received a grant of £4,243 to run a series of thirty performing arts workshops for young people in the East Dartmoor area.
The organisation has young people among its leaders, with two of the Trustees aged 19-20 and 4 youth representatives under 18. Young people create and perform a large proportion of the group's work and they hold regular focus groups with all the young members. Ideas from one of these focus groups were developed into this project. A programme of workshops for 10-18 year olds was established, with the aim of giving young people in the National Park opportunities to express their views about their rural situation. Using creative channels as a medium the participants were trained in skills which will help them in public situations by improving their ability and confidence to project themselves.
As well as being of direct developmental benefit to the 34 young people who participated, the project also provided a social focus in a remote rural area where there are few out-of-school activities or meeting places. Workshops gave the young people the opportunity to learn skills in areas such as music, playwriting, drama, dance and video and gave them the opportunity to experience the process of preparing work for a final performance. The project also helped MED Theatre artists to work in new ways. They had a tight schedule to meet and had to incorporate many different styles of performance and have been able to subsequently use a fusion of film, music, dance and drama in their performances.
The Foundation was also able to offer the Theatre a place on one of its Child Protection Training courses, which they found very useful.
"I learned to act more varied emotions within a small space of time."
